A few weeks ago John Willshire from the Smithery called, he needed some time capsules designing for the Royal Society, more specifically time capsules from the future. So for an intense three week period other work got paused and I became a time capsule designer.

The aim of the capsules was to encourage discussions between members of the Royal Society about which future technologies to focus on in coming years. The capsules were based on four future scenarios. Four unique, slightly dystopian, worlds distinct from each other. The capsules documented the social implications of future technologies rather than the technologies themselves.

Over the three weeks I was involved in a workshop at School 21 in Stratford where we tried to uncover the types of physical items a group of 13 year olds would put in to a time capsule to represent their lives as well as gaining an insight in to their general feelings towards future technologies. I worked with John to help invent the list of different items that would eventually be included in the four capsules, followed by a week of designing the multiple identities, layouts and objects needed to make these objects feel real. Three of my favourite items included an X-ray of a health chip implant, some packaging for insect sausages and a scratch card for an astroid mining company.

It was really interesting trying to embed myself in these dystopian futures as well as finding ways to share these stories with others via our time capsules. It was also a great opportunity to work with some very clever people including the Smithery team, Tom Forsyth and that inspiring bunch of 13 year olds in Stratford.

To read more about the project go here. And as always thank you to Curtis James for the photographs.